I would have no pubes if I were truly in love

Jenny Zhang

This I know
This I am sure of
the only white person at the poetry reading
was totally related to me
I don’t call anything a dream
your primeval stink really gets me
I think fucking is P in V but later
my mom tells me there’s more
Is p pussy and v vagina, I say
You must try everything, she says
I say it too always striving
to be someone’s mirror
everyone tells me I am my mother’s mother
both of us were born with curly pubes
that straightened out late in life
she tells me about a Chinese academic
and I’m like, I’m a Chinese academic!
and she’s like, yeeeah
but not like him
so yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah
I’m not like him
I don’t have anything to say
I don’t have very many ideas
after falling in love I smell medicinal shit
everywhere
trying to locate the source
I trace it to the inside of my bedroom walls
“If you never marry and stay in New York
no one will ever see the lovely paintings
from your childhood that hang on your walls,”
Yah mom, I know that
Is that what you want, she inquires
I know the answer
I know my answer
I know the answer
still I don’t think I have enough
still I don’t think I think enough
I make Minnie Mouse dive into my muff
and I swear to god she’s the only one
who gets me: “You, my dear Minnie
are my best and only friend
no one else in this whole world
understands me.” I swear to god
I shit myself standing up
reading Sweet Valley High in a library
squeezing my cheeks with determination
when Bruce Patton “grazes” Elizabeth’s breast
later I swear to god I wrote “graces” her breast in my diary
and I am so excited by this first evidence of poetic greatness
that I wipe my big sloppy cunt lips on my diary
so I can frame it and get it shown
in the next Whitney Biennial
I know lots of white guys
who have rejected their family wealth
who have done this
framed their own cum
splattered against the front page of yesterday’s newspaper
I have been offered day-old semen
in a champagne glass that came with the discounted Moet
my mom bought from Costco
it’s important to get a good deal on cum-vessels
tomorrow I think I shall shop in bulk for flour and sugar
so that I can bake cum cakes
for my own true love
how good I am
how saintly my practice becomes
how generous I naturally can be
it’s everyone’s party
it’s everyone’s right
“just because it offends u doesn’t mean
u you should make everyone else feel like shit”
just because most days I feel like doo doo
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say sorry
every once in a while
every once in a while
my mom is all like, say sorry
and I’m all like, say sorry
and she’s all like, say sorry without the say
and I’m all like, say sorry without the say!
I bet if she could
she’d stuff me right back up her lil cunt
and we would fulfill each other
in ways we cannot dream of now
it is not so doo doo to be admired
when someone says:
I dream of your rice paper skin
and those almond milk eyes
and your water lily breath
gets my American hamburger
so completely solid
I am like, yah I know
you think I don’t see myself the way you see me?
but I’m not gonna make this about me
I’m not gonna eat Keat’s eye after all and use it
to see who will read me when I’m dead
to see who will write about the women in the fire
after the rest of New York’s landfill floats away
I swear I am related to every single person
who has ever suffered
not that this is about me
or my suffering
or how I am at the center of all this
how no one has ever had it
the way I have had it
how I am the only one who has ever
volunteered to give up my cunt
without anyone asking!
People who know me ask:
how does it feel that the most tragic thing about you
is something the average person cannot ever see?
it feels secretive, I shall say at the next party
it feels wonderful, I shall say at the next dinner
it feels tremendous, I shall say at the next wine and cheese
I feel everything, I shall say to the one person
who has nearly suffered as much as me
we are both so lucky, I shall say
we have both lived so much, I will say
don’t you think so? I find myself saying
don’t you feel it to be true?